Lost Retail: The history of Knob Hill Farms

A picture of a Knob Hill basket. Credit: Wikipedia

For today’s lost retail post I’ll be talking about an old, local chain of grocery stores called Knob Hill Farms. Knob Hill Farms was a chain of 10 warehouse-like “food terminals” in the Toronto area. These stores were pretty large for a supermarket at the time they operated ranging from 65,000 sqft to a gigantic 335,000 sqft. Due to financial issues, Knob Hill Farms closed/sold all their stores in 2000.

History

Knob Hill Farms was founded in 1954 by Steve Stavro as a more conventional grocery chain operating 9 markets in Toronto. It wasn’t until 1963 that Stravro opened his first 65,000 sqft “food terminal” in Markham.
In 1971, Knob Hill Farms expanded into Pickering with its second terminal. Knob Hill Farms than opened their first Toronto store  in 1975 and second Toronto terminal opened in 1977.
Their fifth store, which was billed as the largest food store in North America at the time, opened in 1978 in Mississauga. This was the first store in the chain to sell some non-food products and was initially two storeys tall, but the second level was closed off to customers later on. They then opened a 226,000 sqft location in  Oshawa. In 1985, Knob Hill opened a very large 325,000 sqft location in the Weston area of Toronto.
In 1991, Knob Hill opened a small store in Cambridge, which was a crash and burn store that probability closed in 1999.The two-storey Riverdale food terminal at Carlaw Avenue and Gerrard Street in Toronto opened in 1992 and was the company's ninth location.

Demise and Aftermath

In 2000, Steve Stavro announced that he plans on closing all the Knob Hill Farms food terminals. This was due to enriched competition from Loblaws and newer chains, like Costco, and debt.
According to a Wikipedia article, here are the status of the Knob Hill stores today.

•  The Markham location was sold for $11.5 million to local chain, Michael-Angelo's, which is now closed.
• Loblaw Companies paid $34.2 million to acquire the Lansdowne & Dundas location, the Mississauga location, and the Carlaw & Gerrard location. These stores reopened as No Frills stores. Loblaw then  purchased the Weston store and redeveloped it as a Real Canadian Superstore, which opened in 2006. 
• The Cambridge site is now occupied by Home Depot and Canadian Tire. 
• The Scarborough site is now a Walmart. 
• The Pickering store  was occupied by Dot Patio and T-Phat Supermarket, but now is demolished. 
• The Cherry Street site became a T&T Supermarket in 2007.
• The Oshawa location became a discount/liquidation outlet and a flea market briefly before being abandoned. In July 2014, the Oshawa location was demolished and is now a GO Station.

Knob Hill Farms sounded like a pretty cool chain to visit. But sadly they faded to the Blue light like many chains did.I hope you enjoyed this edition of Lost retail.


Until next post,
DZ